Well, so much for my cautious pre-election optimism; it looks like Bush has narrowly won the U.S. Presidential election without cheating this time.

So now we have four more years of the Bush/Cheney Administration to look forward to. Four more years of:

• Divisive, simplistic, conservative Christian dogma;
  

• Bombastic isolationist American neo-imperialism;
• An incompetently-occupied Iraq with a growing bodycount;
  

• Global terrorism;
  

• Tax handouts for the rich, increasingly desparate poverty for the poor, and an ever-growing budget deficit for future generations to pay off;
  

• Chronic abuse of the environment;
  

• A nation divided.
  

Bollocks. This is even worse than the Thatcher years.

The U.S. Presidential Election is still too close to call, but I’m still cautiously optimistic that Kerry’s going to win.

So far, there have been no surprises, because most of the key “battleground states” are still too close to call. But voter turnout is huge, which is good for Kerry.

I’ve been watching (terrestrial broadcast) TV a little, but the quality of the coverage is even worse than the reception. Dan Rather, the veteran election anchor on CBS, is even less articulate than Bush! The BBC map on the web is the best presentation I’ve found so far.

However, looking at the map geographically can be quite depressing, because the whole middle of the U.S. is GOP (Republican) coloured… Fortunately most of these landlocked states voting for Bush are sparsely populated, and have very few Electoral College votes — like 3 or 5, compared to California’s 55 or New York’s 31. The New York Times has provided a more encouraging histogram map (click “View Map According to Electoral Votes”).

One thing is obvious — the result isn’t going to be clear until very late.

I think Kerry’s going to win the U.S. Presidential election today. Here’s why:

• Many former Republican voters have gone on record pledging to vote for Kerry this time around. I haven’t heard of any former Democrat voters swinging to the Bush side
  

• Apparently Dick “Sick” Cheney flew to Hawaii to campaign for the 4 Electoral College votes there today — surely an act of desperation!
  

• There are something like 14,000 volunteer lawyers standing by across the U.S. to assist in the case of voting irregularities
  

• Kerry looks increasingly confident, whereas Bush simply looks tired and dogmatic
  

• The opinion polls (which are notoriously inaccurate) are predicting it to be within a few percentage points — easily within the margin of error
  

• Kerry is well-known for making last-minute come-backs
  

• The Boston Red Sox won the World Series, ending the Curse of the Bambino
  

• A left-wing coalition party led by cancer doctor Tabaré Vázquez was elected at the weekend in Uruguay
  

• Because the alternate scenario is just too awful to contemplate
  

I had a very enjoyable Halloween weekend this year; on Saturday night I took Paul & Caroline, two friends visiting from London, to a Halloween Party at The Delancey. The party was fun; we met up with some other friends there, and it was a pretty good venue that I’d never been to before.

I even managed to come up with a low-effort (and low-cost) but reasonably effective Halloween costume idea, which involved only a 99 cent tube of red body paint, a black marker pen and a $6.99 plastic knife with fake blood inside it (I normally hate feeling obliged to come up with a costume at Halloween).

Then on Sunday after a pleasant day strolling around Brooklyn in the sun watching the kids trick-or-treating, and after Paul & Caroline had left for the airport, I went to see the cello rock band Rasputina play to a pretty much full house at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill in Times Square. My friend and former colleague Zoë Keating is a member of Rasputina, and so after the gig I went back to Brooklyn in the tour bus with the band (dodging the many autograph hunters outside the venue!), helped unload the gear in DUMBO, and then caught up with Zoë over a pint or two.

And on top of all that, the weather was glorious all weekend!

Very sad news — John Peel, Radio 1’s veteran DJ since the station’s launch in 1967 (a year before I was born!) died of a heart attack in Cuzco, Peru today.

Pretty much anyone that ever listened to music radio in the UK over the last 30-odd years knew and loved the sound of John Peel’s voice, and his eclectic taste in music.

He will be greatly missed.

Because blood is thinner than oil!

http://www.bushrelativesforkerry.com/

The BBC News website has a great interactive infographic about the U.S. election; it’s an interactive map showing American voting patterns state by state.

I found the map of past elections, which adds an interactive timeline to the map, particularly fascinating; I never knew that Richard Nixon gained 520 of the total 538 Electoral College votes, winning in every single state except Massachusetts in 1972, for example, or that Reagan was returned with 525 votes in 1984, elected by every single state except Minnesota.

The best year for the Democrats, however, was 1964, when Lyndon Johnson was elected with 486 of the votes.

This is funny — the Lone Star Iconoclast, the local newspaper in Bush’s home town of Crawford, Texas, with a print circulation of approximately 900, has caused something of a kerfuffle by endorsing John Kerry! Apparently readership has plummeted, but the editors are receiving letters of support from all over the World.

I just spent entirely too much time reading stuff on a site called Rocketpack Magazine.

On a related note — whatever happened to the Utopian Dream where everyone would have a personal jet-pack by the year 2000?

I went to an posh office in midtown Manhattan today, to participate in a focus group about Earthlink, my cable Internet service provider (who I’m generally very happy with, by the way). Since I’m not working right now, I could easily spare a couple of hours between 6-8pm for $100, and besides which, I was curious to see how they would facilitate such a meeting.

However, there was some kind of administrative mix-up, because my name wasn’t on the list at the front desk, despite the fact that I confirmed by telephone on more than one occasion. They told me to take a seat and wait anyway, so I helped myself to the free coffee and sat down with a magazine.

Around 6pm, someone came out and called out some names, but my name wasn’t on the list, so I continued waiting in the reception area. 5 minutes later, the receptionist called me over and gave me a $100 bill, and said they wouldn’t need me after all!

So, I was paid a ton to sit around in a waiting area drinking coffee and reading a magazine for 15 minutes. I think that has to count as the easiest $100 I ever made.